Category: Media

It’s All Us Feelthy Bloggers Fault

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At a national press club event, WH Reporter, and wanker, Dick Gregory claimed that the polarization in the national dialog was a function of the internet. Blogger Richard Power (love that pseudonym) eloquenty responds, and reminds Mr. Gregory of the words of I.F. Stone and Tom Paine, and then sums up (some) the events that really led up to this polarization:

  • Rich pigs like Richard Mellon Scaife dropping tens of millions of dollars on attempted coups like “The Arkansas Project”.
  • The impeachment debacle.
  • The incompetent handling of intel by Bush and His Evil Minions™ leading up to 911
  • The deliberate and premeditated minipulation and deception on intelligence by Bush and His Evil Minions™ leading up to Iraq.
  • The Swift Boating.
  • The theft of the election in Florida in 2000.
  • Voter suppression and intimidation.
  • The Jamming on Democratic phone banks on election day.
  • The US Gulags.
  • The politicization of the Justice Department.
  • Terry Sciavo
  • Valerie Plame

He makes the point that if Tom Paine were alive, he’d be blogging. Go read it.

The thing that really bugs guys like Mr. Gregory is not the “polarization”, it’s that some guy sitting in front of his screen can fact check him using 15 minutes with Google, and show that he’s doing sloppy, poor quality work.

Giuliani Used City Money for Visits to Then Mistress, Judith Nathan

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What’s more, he also cooked the books to conceal this:

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

But wait, there’s more, he also provided a police driver and city car for his chippie.

In a world of real journalism, this would be the lead story for the next week…In Rupert Murdoch’s America??? Page 12.

All Democrats Should Behave Like This

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There is a lot I don’t like about Hillary Clinton….Hell…..There is a lot I don’t like about bill Clinton…..but Hillary Clinton’s behavior to the press is not one of them.

Read the article about how Senator Clinton and her people hit back at Bob Novak’s bogus story about here digging Dirt on Barack Obama. Not only were they in front of the story, they got Bob Novak to essentially retract the story.

This episode indicates why Hillary is not as bad a candidate as a lot of people say, though I’m still leery about her being the “leader of the free world”.

She handles the press well….and she is not out for them to love her, they are out for them to fear her.

What’s more, it works. Novak backpedaled because the press was scared enough of Hillary and her people to actually press him on his story, which was clearly Rove disinformation.

Of course, then she goes and spoils it all by saying that she’ll appoint Colin Powell a foreign emissary, the man who lied about WMDs before the United nations. Because she’s so tied in with the “very serious people” inside the DC beltway.

My head hurts.

Jury Duty Reviews

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Well, a few weeks ago, I got a summons for Jury duty, and today, I had to show up, juror number 635, so I show up to the courthouse in Towson at 9:00am. Parking is paid for, so I go up to level “L”, park, and go into the courthouse.

Taking a left after the metal detector, I then go up a short flight of stairs, hang a right, and get in line. I am given a packet with a jury badge, and $15.00 in cash for expenses.

Once we are all checked in, a woman working for the courts picks up a microphone, and explains the basics of how it works. We are to be sent upstairs by juror number, and then go through voir dire. Given my early diet of Perry Mason, it all seems pretty much second nature to me.

There are monitors arranged throughout the jury room, and they are used to show a brief, and rather cheesy video showing how it is all supposed to work. It was narrated by a judge, and showed pretty clearly just why they use actors to portray them on TV.

While we were waiting, they put a movie on the monitors to entertain us* (more on this later), but about halfway through, the paused it to call jurors 1 through 330 to court for voir dire. They then restarted the film. At about 12:20, most of jurors 1-330 (they only take twelve and a few alternates) returned to the jury room.

At about 12:50 we were sent out for lunch with instructions to return by 2:00pm. They ran the last half of the film again for the benefit of those jurors remaining from the 1-330 cohort.

At about 3:30, Judge Pat Springer came to the room, and thanked us all for our service, and we were free to go.

As a special bonus to this post, I am adding what I hope will be a VERYinfrequent feature of this blog, Jury Duty Reviews:

The movie in question was Secondhand Lions.

Michael Caine: Garth
Robert Duvall: Hub
Haley Joel Osment: Walter
Kyra Sedgwick: Mae

The film was chosen by the court staff was an attempt to find something that would not offend anyone, but still would entertain what would necessarily be an adult audience.

The film covers some fairly well trod ground, with Osmont being the 13 year old child of the feckless mother Sedgwick who is dumped off on his great uncles, Caine and Duvall.

Sedgwick has a minor roll really, and this is essentially a 3 person film, albeit one where they are played by 6 actors, because of the extensive use of flashbacks.

It is set in Texas, and Cain does his accent very well. Duvall does not do an accent, but his manner of speaking fits in well with the Texas location. Thankfully, Osmont does not attempt an accent all.

Duvall, as always, is impressive, as is Caine, who can sometimes disappoint, and Osmont does a very creditable job in playing a 13 year old.

Your kids will love this movie, and it’s entertaining for the adults.

It’s funny and…I’m sorry, but I have to say it….Heartwarming.

*Yes, I know, it’s technically a public performance in violation of US IP laws, because it qualifies as a “public performance”, but I’m not ratting them out to the MPAA.

US Charging Bilal Hussein in Iraqi Court with Secret Evidence

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They have held the award winning photographer for more than 19 months, and now they are finally charging him in a process that his employer, the AP calls a sham. The AP claims, and I’m inclined to agree that these charges are because he got pictures that the military did not want:

Tomlin said the AP has faced chronic difficulties in meeting Hussein at the Camp Cropper detention facility in Baghdad and its own intensive investigations of the case—conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Paul Gardephe—have found no support for allegations that he was anything other than a working journalist in a war zone.

This is just disgraceful.

Scott McClellan Calls Bush Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Card Liars

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An excerpt from Scott McClellan’s new book:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“There was one problem. It was not true.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

CNN Sucks Wet Farts From Dead Pigeons

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Un-dirtyword-believeable. During the audience questions at the last debate, Maria Luisa, a UNLV student asked Hillary Clinton “whether she preferred “diamonds or pearls”. Now it turns out that CNN planted the question and forced her to ask it.

Wolf Blitzer, and the CNN corresponds, are a human stain.

I want Keith Olbermann to moderate a debate. Heck, I’d settle for Homer Simpson moderating the debate.

Of course my fantasy would be for Jon Stewart to moderate, but that is too much to ask.

F.C.C. Looking to Re-Regulate Cable

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The FCC has (finally) appeared to nitice that Cable is a natural monopoly, and had decided to enforce the so called 70/70 rule*, and it is proposing some new regulations:

  • Prevent significant new a mergers and acquisition by the large cable players.
  • Require A la carte channel sales.
  • That would make it easier for independent programmers, which are often small operations, to lease access to cable channels.
  • Set a cap on cable companies at 30% of the market.

It’s about bloody time.

*“The agency may adopt rules necessary to promote “diversity of information sources” once the commission concludes that cable television is available to at least 70 percent of American households, and at least 70 percent of those households actually subscribe to a cable service.”

Right Wing Regenry Press Cheats Authors Out of Royalties

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It appears that Regenry Press, incubator of right wing nutjobs who can’t write*, is getting sued for cheating authors out of royalties. The claim is that Regenry, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.

Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

I love that last quote. FWIW, they are not acting like a “Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company“, they are acting like a Harvard Business School professor.

As a matter of law, I am not a lawyer. As a matter of the facts, this is rather complicated. Regenery has a long history of basically giving its books away to boost numbers, you see it all the time at places like Newsmax, where if you subscribe, they’ll throw in a bloody library of conservative hardcover tripe. This way, someone who writes a book that might sell 3,000 copies gets to do the pundit circuit as a someone who has sold 100,000 copies,

I’d love to be a part of the legal discovery process, but right now I’m basking in the Schadenfreude.

*Yeah, like I’m one to talk, but at least I don’t think that I’m the next Hemingway.

Great Smackdown of Tim Russert: Stop the Inanity | The American Prospect

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Paul Waldman has the same fantasy that I do:

I have a fantasy that at one of these moments, a candidate will say, “You know what, Tim, I’m not going to answer that question. This is serious business. And you, sir, are a disgrace. You have in front of you a group of accomplished, talented leaders, one of whom will in all likelihood be the next president of the United States. You can ask them whatever you want. And you choose to engage in this ridiculous gotcha game, thinking up inane questions you hope will trick us into saying something controversial or stupid. Your fondest hope is that the answer to your question will destroy someone’s campaign. You’re not a journalist, you’re the worst kind of hack, someone whose efforts not only don’t contribute to a better informed electorate, they make everyone dumber. So no, I’m not going to stand here and try to come up with the most politically safe Bible verse to cite. Is that the best you can do?”

It is a mark of the hacktacular nature of the Washington Punditocracy* that this man is treated with any respect.

*Which might be better described as a Kakistocracy.

Hollywood Writers Strike

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I know that there are doubtless a lot of people who think that they shouldn’t even be in a union, or strike, but half of these guy’s income is residuals, and the studios are proposing nothing as an amount.

The fact is that the writers should be given a cut of revenues regardless of channel, and there is no risk if they get a percentage.

The fact is that the studios have never, ever, taken a risk on new media. It’s always been someone else shelling out to the for the privilege of seeing if a media will fly or sink. There is no reason for the studios to freeze these guys out.